Wharton Looks To Alter Employee Benefits To Balance Budget

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(Memphis) Memphis City Council members are basking in the calm before the storm.

In less than 24 hours Mayor A C Wharton will present his budget to the city council about how to spend your money.

The budget is tight, and one way politicians are possibly looking to save, is cutting funding to public safety by more than a million dollars.

Councilman Jim Strickland says the biggest point argument is city pensions.

“We are greatly underfunding our retirement plan. The mayor agrees with that, the union agrees with that, and we agree that. Where there is disagreement is what type of retirement plan we should have and how we can pay for it,” said Strickland.

The Mayor's office is arguing with the police and fire unions over how much the fund is short, even though they all agree it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The mayor wants to switch to a 401K system, the unions don't like that idea.

The council will make the ultimate decision and is waiting on its own study.

Wharton has also tossed around the idea of the city no longer paying for retiree medical care if those people can qualify for medicare or another program.

Right now, the city pays up to 70% of medical costs for retirees and some of their relatives.

Tuesday the council will also take up a plan to reestablish the Memphis Police citizen`s review board.

Last week, some community members asked what happened to the board and complained police aren't being held accountable.

Council members want to know why the review board stopped meeting.

“The board doesn't have any teeth to come back and give any sanctions, and so that`s one of the things we really need to be looking at. The push-back is the police department doesn't want any independent group reviewing them and then reporting on their actions. They would rather police themselves,” said Councilman Harold Collins.

31 comments

Joe, I don’t know who told you that a pension pays what your salary is when you retire, but you were badly misinformed. Do you even know how the pension system works? From your post, I would say that you don’t.

Sparky

Well I see Joe is spreading his liberal BS again. What an idiot and a tool! Too bad he doesn’t work within the city government. Let the powers that be; take away what is contractually binding then promote business failures with his money. That’s not going to happen to old Joe because Joe couldn’t count past his digits. In order to grasp the magnitude of impact on these individuals that are servants of the citizens of Memphis. You have to understand economics and the math behind the pension. He has no clue. Nor does the average citizen. So therefor, spread the lies about the apocoliptic pension monster and they all run from it. Break the contract and leave. What the citizens do without the MPD, MFD or the majority of the devices they have now? Future of these are stake here not just what Joe is spreading.

Hey, … I hope, at least, everyone knows there isn’t any way on God’s green earth the city can get current with the current pension scheme’s funding requirements. It just can’t happen.

You’ve had a bunch of knuckleheads running Memphis for the last 20 – 25 years who been very irresponsible, especially in the areas of employee benefits and retirement plans.

Truth be known, if the State of Tennessee hadn’t got in the City administration’s mug, nothing would be getting done now. The State told your City record keepers their financial statements are bogus because they weren’t accurately reflecting their pension and OPEB (Other Post Employment Benefits), aka retiree medical benefits.

This is sad, folks, because there are retirees who will likely have to pay much more for their insurance coverage, and may even have their pensions reduced. For current employees, there are likely to be major changes to the retirement plans they will retire under.

It’s a lousy situation, folks, brought about by the ineptness and irresponsibility of the people who have been running the City for the past 20 – 25 years. There is no one else yo point the finger at.

John T. Dwyer

In August of 1973, I was sitting in a classroom at Armour Center and was told the following:
“As a police officer, you will not become rich on this job nor, should you expect to. You should expect to render 25 years of dedicated service to this city and it’s citizens. You will do so in an honorable and straightforward fashion. You cannot be late for work and you cannot be expected to take off sick because you are just tired. People’s lives depend on you being on duty and being there when you are needed. This job is a calling and if you cannot follow this course in your career…there’s the door. If you can follow this course..the only reward will be a simple pension paid by your citizens to let you live comfortably in your waning years. You can also expect to have their unspoken gratitude. The words Courage, Knowledge and Integrity are on every imprimatur of the Memphis Police Department. Your measure as a police officer, and as a man, will be measured from now on out by those words. The badges and name tags of several others you follow are affixed to a plywood board in the museum. They died in the service to their fellow citizens. You owe it to them and Almighty God to do your best! ”
I happened to be the fool who asked about Social Security being paid and was told in no uncertain terms, “NO!” I asked if I could pay into it and was also told in no uncertain terms, “NO!”

I retired with the thought that my pension would remain intact and enough to live without want. So many of my fellow employees do not. They have had to take demeaning part time jobs to simply survive and keep their insurance. I could not afford insurance for over 20 years. This year I got coverage by the affordable health care act.
If you want to compare public versus private job experiences/benefits, I’ll be happy to share some of mine with you.

D. Phillips

What is Memphis’ problem? It’s always we don’t have the funds. You don’t have a tax base here because people can’t find viable sources of income. Why does International Paper and Fedex don’t pay property taxes? This town is the next Detroit, there is no leadership in City Hall this city is finished. Keep messing with the 1st responder, you will find yourself with no emergency personnel.

Ricky

“Backloading” must be something common out west, i.e. California, where politicians explode/inflate their pensions. Nothing of the sort exists here for the lowly first responder. We leave with 62 percent of our pay after twenty-five years. When Wharton cuts our retiree healthcare, we’ll probably leave with an adjusted 54 percent because of those cuts from good ‘ol A.C. and Little.

There are many reasons why this pension funding problem exists. Some are:

– First off, the City has not made the required contributions to the plans for several years. This caused the problem to mushroom.

– The administration implemented some very expensive plans to reward their cronies who were appointed to City positions. Remember the “fully vested in 12 years” plan for appointed employees??? An example of the cost … is your very own Roland Mcelrath, who retired from the City under this deal and is now drawing a salary from MLGW of about $140,000. There are more like that if you want to dig a little.

– You also have legions of Police and Fire personnel drawing disability pensions, under very little scrutiny, … with some working a different job with the City and drawing a City salary.

– The city did nothing to “encourage” retirees receiving medical insurance to sign up for Medicare as their primary coverage. The County began this initiative a few years ago after some prodding by some local government gadflies.

– In addition to the above, … until very recently there was no interest by your City administration to evaluate different alternatives for the retirement and insurance situation. Because of this lack of initiative, the changes will be much more painful to plan participants than if they had been ushered in over the past 10 years, or so.

You have the current group of knuckleheads hanging around city hall to blame for this, as well as the previous Mayor and his posse of knuckleheads.

They can’t ignore it any longer. The State of Tennessee is demanding they get the City’s financial house in order.

d wilson

There is no one to my knowledge getting a Line of duty disability and working for the city. If you retire and come back to the city, your pension stops and you go back on payroll. Now Wharton is drawing his shelby county pension, while he is the mayor of memphis.

The disability pension has to be approved by the 3 city appointed doctors. Not your doctor, the city doctors. Then the pension board must approve on top of the city doctors. The city can and does put people back to work that are on disability. The city hired an auditor last year and he reported only a few that could be put back to work. The city just isn’t handing out disability pensions.

Medicare, was not paid by city employees until about 1990. People hired after that date will get on medicare. Those hired before the date can not get on medicare and the city must cover them. The city a few years ago was going to back pay for medicare for those employees, but I don’t know what happen to that plan.

The city pension plan is not the problem. The problem is all the money the city has to spend on other items. City invest in private investments, but doesn’t see any of the profit from those private investments? What a great deal, we get the city to put in money or match ours and we keep all the profit. Or they tell the city they will hire employees only to use a temp company and they pay $8-$9 an hour. More profit made off the taxpayer and the workers. Let not forget that Sears project will have apartments that will be managed by Kemp Conrad’s company? Don’t you wish you could vote on projects that will help your company make money and he isn’t the only one.